Teeger disentangles a pedagogy that instils doubt—a chilling account of how South African schools struggle with the history of the past as learners try to make sense of a brittle rainbow future. The author’s account is also reminiscent of a white teacher in a top Johannesburg school who told his Black learners that they were privileged to be seated in class with white learners. The ethnographic study reminds readers of the dreams shattered by post-apartheid pedagogies. This in-depth study reveals how teachers and learners wrestle with the courage to confront the peddling of lies as they delve into the guilt of history. Yet, due to revisionist tendencies, teachers often consciously choose to flee from real narratives.
The author examines the betrayal of history and the deceptions that learners contend with in classrooms. In her candid account, Teeger illustrates how South African teachers—and the system—continue to promote the idea that for the country to succeed as a true rainbow nation, people must “move on,” thus disregarding the past. This creates a make-believe world where race and the gruesome narratives of the past have no place.
While the author examines the delivery of history as a learning area, she also interrogates its pedagogy. The book is unequivocal that history has always been central to apartheid education, where classrooms cheated learners into believing that history began with the Dutch under Jan van Riebeeck in 1652. Through empirical evidence, the book shows that although many would like to believe the ogre of apartheid has vanished, it continues to rear its head in the education system, selling half-truths to unassuming families of the so-called transformed society.
Teachers in the selected schools avoid topics of race, ethnicity, and equality—issues that remain a nemesis to society. History education mirrors a society in denial, one that abdicates the struggle for equality to sport, selling the fallacy that sport unites. But sport cannot truly unite when the rationale of history is denied. Teeger highlights a critical yet sad truth: talking about race has become taboo in classrooms that are eager to promote the reconciliation ideal, as is evident in the two schools she studied.
Teachers are aware that they must skip many pages in the history textbooks to forget the macabre past and focus on what supposedly paints a better picture of society. Teeger shows how teachers support narratives that encourage a flight from history, making Black learners believe they are unaffected by their parents’ past struggles. This is a tendency to mislead learners into erasing the past. The study unearths the myth of the rainbow nation. Learners are not encouraged to confront the past with rigor and critical reflection.
The book is critical of two aspects that require urgent action in the history learning area. The first is the need for teachers to learn to unlearn the methods by which they were taught. History teaching in schools continues to propagate miseducation and dehumanizing pedagogy. The author explores the struggles of decolonial education, in which learners are failed by the absence of diversity and the persistence of epistemological injustices.
Teeger’s experiences reveal that history education lacks the necessary African consciousness—without which the learning area becomes meaningless. The author argues that teachers cannot continue with a history curriculum that does not challenge domination and white privilege. Schools reflect what decolonial scholars refer to as historicides, and the flight from truth ensures that learners struggle to identify with the masses because the history taught in classrooms alienates them. Even when teachers try to introduce role-play to depict apartheid South Africa, they create chaos in learners’ experiences and their understanding of apartheid realities. Immersed in role-play, learners develop a distorted view of the present, while teachers’ reluctance to honestly uncover past injustices abruptly channel learners into dubious narratives. Estranged from history, learners are left flummoxed—they understand the present less because the past has been fractured.
This book is a compelling example of how a pedagogy can reinforce inequality while perpetuating lies. It highlights the dangers that arise when fanatical teachers peddle untruths in the name of nation-building. Teeger shakes society awake, exposing how teachers can be trapped by a history curriculum that lacks progressiveness. Her deep immersion in the school cultures studied reveals her intellectual bravery as she confronts the guilt of history head-on.
The book is invaluable—precisely on point in elucidating not only the historical, but also the sociological and psychological anatomy of history teaching. The author is crying out loud for the re-membering of South Africa’s tattered past.
